"Mongolia is kind of close, right?" Story about an attempt to ski everywhere in the world where there's snow. And in some places where there isn't. On and off-piste skiing on all continents, skiing into craters of live volcanoes, caving, climbing, photography, and travel.

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Eve of the eve... not much time, heavy rain, slush on the road... but I wanted to get out and about. And visit another bunker.

According to the Lynx database of the remains from the Soviet occupation of Porkkala, there's a bunker at the end of Tammitie (the Oak Road) near Humaljärvi lake in Kirkkonummi

Just that the road was slippery ice, barely wide enough to fit my car, ditches on both sides, and no way to turn back. And now I was stuck, unable to continue. Or rather, if I would continue I'd not be able to get back. So I backed up two hundred meters and found a more reasonable parking spot.

And I found the bunker, too, it was visible far from the road actually.

The bunker turned too to be the standard smaller Soviet bunker mode that we've already seen many times. Long entrance tunnel, beautiful green moss on the top entrance, and collapsed/blown up gun hole. But not all standard bunkers seem to have had a wall in the middle of the main room. Here they did, like the in bunker in Lindal as well.

Most of this bunker was quite untouched, main entrance would still have been crawable, the small side room and the entrance tunnel were intact, but again a few stones had been dropped on the top entrance, and the gun hole side of the bunker was partially blown up.

I had my drone with me, but it was raining too heavily for the drone to be flown.

This blog article is also available on TGR. Tämä blogiartikkeli löytyy myös suomeksi Relaasta. Photos and videos (c) 2017 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. Music and sound effects from Apple iMovie. See discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4201.

Sunday, December 17, 2017

The Lynx map about the remnants of Soviet occupation in Porkkala pointed to a bunker in Vårnäs, next to Kabanovintie. But, I think what's on the site is more likely remains of farm houses and wells/sewers.

Interesting place though, as is Porkkala in general. I also found 20-30 severed moose legs, this is probably someone's moose hunt butchering spot.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Before visiting a very nice bunker in Fagerkulla with Jari, I went to a walk in a forest. The plan was to visit some interesting spots I had found from a map. I did not expect to see any bunkers but when I stepped out of the car I saw a bunker just a few meters from me.

The bunker seem to be of a smaller Soviet standard type with a gunhole at the top. Unfortunately the top hole was fully filled and no other entrance was visible. The bunker is next to Sepänkyläntie (N 60.157015 E 24.493450).

South of the bunker on the other side of Sepänkyläntie is a Soviet era stone quarry. And to the west of the quarry is another one just after a forest road.

Bunker and quarries are visible in aerial photos from 1956. (These photos can be accessed from https://kirkkonummi.karttatiimi.fi/; select first "Historialliset aineistot" and then "Ortoilmakuva 1956".)

Monday, December 11, 2017

Jarmo and I were scouting for bunkers or other interesting underground findings on Sunday. Besides finding the inaccessible Ingels bunker, we found no other bunker despite the promise from the Lynx information that there'd be a "ruins / bunker". There was only ruins!

Nevertheless, we had an interesting walk in the beautiful scenery of the Humaljärvi lake. And we found many other things, the ruins of a large villa and many other smaller ruins in a nearby hill. We also saw many Soviet-era trenches. And possible remains of quarrying, with too many rectangular pieces missing to make this a coincidence. Finally, we found a memorial of people died in 1918, probably due to the civil war. (Later note: Jarmo found this wikipedia page that explains the events.)

We also saw odd barbed wire setups in the forest, a lone round table crafted from stone, a dam and nice rocky hills.

Jarmo has been looking at 1956-era aerial pictures of Kirkkonummi and the Porkkala parenthesis area, to look for evidence of places that we don't know of yet. Some of the remains on the hill are still houses in 1956. I wonder what happened to the houses, were they in too bad condition, or was the land they were on never reclaimed by the original owners?

Jarmo and I visited the Ingels bunker. Unfortunately, it turned out that we could only find a concrete slab, and found no way to enter or peek inside, or even figure out if there was anything underneath.

At first it seemed like the concrete slab had a possible opening underneath, but it didn't lead further than 10-15 cm under the slab.

We looked for openings, but they had been either filled or simply did not exist any more. This odd structure was nearby though, at the beginning of a ditch... couldn't see a pipe though, although it could of course have been somewhere deeper. Ditch/pipe structure, or part of bunker? Unknown.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

I went for a sauna and swim in the Allas Seapool today. Late arrival, after 8pm... and they were already closing at 9pm.

And their sauna was broken, not heated hot enough. Oh well. I decided to go in anyway, and got a discount from the usual (rather steep) 12€ price.

What a wonderful visit though. The water in the pool was warm, while the wind was blazing and temperature was somewhere around 2-3 degrees... very nice, even if the few tens of meters walk to the pool was "interesting."

Another "interesting" situation was that apparently they had started a naked swim evenings for every Saturday, and I without knowing this I happened to be there on Saturday... not my thing and most other people also seemed to have bathing suits. But I'm glad people can swim naked if they want to.

I had a tough week, basically trying to survive on 4-5 hours of sleep for every night, due to travel and meetings. I had talked about possibly exploring something with my friend Jarmo on Saturday. But by the time I woke up, it was already afternoon...

And Jarmo was hiking in some forest. We were able to arrange a meet up, however, so that he could continue with me to a bunker in the same direction that he was at.

The bunker in Fagerkulla didn't look like much. A concrete slab visible from the small road going by it.

One difference was the warning rope around the bunker, indicating a fall danger. That was possibly a good sign, if somebody can fall in, then perhaps we could climb in.

As we have explored bunkers around the Soviet occupied territory of Kirkkonummi, almost all of them have been of the standard small model. We had only run three times to the ZIF-25, larger two-story model that housed a 110mm gun. In one case the larger bunker was completely inaccessible with all entrances blocked. In two other cases they were so badly damaged that we either did not dare to enter beyond the entrance corridor, or too destroyed to understand their inner setup.

But we finally found an accessible ZIF-25 here in Fagerkulla! Blown up internally, but, reasonably easily accessed. We had to climb down to the entrance corridor from a small crack, and then walk down a pile of dirt to the lower level, and under hanging pieces of concrete to get the main room.

The ZIF-25 gun room is on the top floor, and underneath was likely storage space. The floor in between was gone, but now the big room was easily visited. On the entrance side of the bunker there was two floors as well, the entrance corridor, another corridor underneath, and two small rooms on top of each other. Here the walls were not entirely gone, so we could see the structure, and walk around a bit.

This blog is also available on TGR. Tämä blogi löytyy myös suomeksi Relaasta. Photos and videos (c) 2017 by Jarmo Ruuth and Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. The song "The Framework" by Jingle Punks, freely usable from YouTube audio library.

Friday, December 8, 2017

This is a difficult bunker to get to. Not because being covered by dirt or blown up. But the whole area is guarded by, well, people who do not like other people to visit their part of the country. I have seen plenty of blocked roads, but the Sarvvik people have managed to block more than ten square kilometres of land.

Blocked from entrance by car, by gates and prohibited driving signs. You can still enter this area on foot or by bike, which is good.

In any case, I was looking for the bunker on Näsbacken, and it was easy to find. Standard bunker model, a gun mounted on top, an exit hole to the top (blocked by rocks), and a long walk-in entrance tunnel that was partially covered by dirt (still accessible though). Nice area, nice fields, nice bunker. Insides were mostly intact, except the main room that was half-filled with rocks.